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Clapperboard, please.
Serata America, interview with Leone.
One, first.
One moment. Good.
Cinema for me is above all a big show
where events of the masked life are proposed.
It is a vehicle for recounting one’s own experiences
historical, or psychological experiences
always through the fable and the myth
through the show.
I was born in cinema.
I live on cinema, I read cinema, I see cinema.
For me, cinema is life and vice versa.
How can one forget the world of childhood?
All my films are permeated with these feelings
from "A fistful of dollars" to "Once upon a time in the west".
After all, in my films, the world is judged by children.
Do you see those little pillars up there?
They didn't used to be there.
Instead of columns, there were us
10- to 12-year-old boys with big paddles
coming down like Taboga at 50 to 60 kilometers per hour.
A blue avalanche finding down then unwelcome guests.
The neighborhood was swarming with Germans.
This is '42/'45. My first western.
I can say that I was born almost on a movie set
because my mother was a young actress with Galli.
When I was a child
my father was making his last film
after many years of absence due to fascism.
He was an anti-fascist
and therefore was politically persecuted.
He was the favorite director of Francesca Bertini
who was the star of Italian cinema
and for a few years the star of world cinema.
He direct Bice Waleran who would later become his wife
also a great silent film diva.
When Italian cinema began to go into crisis
Vincenzo Leone or Roberto Roberti directed
some of the most spectacular Italian films of the 1920s
such as "Fra' Diavolo".
Vincenzo Leone wanted to make a popular cinema
accessible to everyone and ennobled by that.
I have the impression
that Sergio walked on the same path of his father.
The only time I saw Sergio on the brink of speaking
in tears
was when he was talking about his father.
A film festival of old Italian films was taking place.
One of his father's movie was playing in another room.
He left the room, he went to see his father's film
and didn't want to talk afterwards.
He left in tears.
I was born with my father's frustration
of not doing what he wanted to do
however, living on cinema from morning to night
talking about movies, he would vent to me.
So, when I turned 14, at first
I had a total aversion to this environment, this craft.
When my father decided to retire
to the hometown of Torrella dei Lombardi in Irpinia
I strangely felt a great urge to continue what he was doing.
It came upon me almost as an obligation.
THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES
He understood that his way was the epic film
the movies about the absolute hero protagonist.
I want to debunk a concept.
"The Colossus of Rhodes" is an ironic film.
The character is a playboy.
- What is this perfume? - Roses, my grandson.
Rhodes is also the island of roses.
And of beautiful women, I see.
From the set photos we have
we can see he's already the master of the set.
I really dictated the epic comedy genre.
Clint Eastwood was a swimming instructor.
Then, for many years he had been the second actor
in a western series called "Rawhide".
When they sent him to me
to see one of these subjects, "The Black Sheep"
he did not speak, he did not say a word.
I wrote the script in 15 days.
It all started with my viewing of "Yojimbo".
The thing that intrigued me most about 'Yojimbo' was the fact
that it had been taken from an American novel
a mystery series.
Kurosawa had transported the idea to his samurai.
I wanted to bring this idea back.
The thing that struck me about this boy was his indolence.
He was a real cat-man, born lazy.
He seemed to sleep as he walked.
But then, when it was time
he gained a curious speed and dynamics.
This gave me a very specific cliché
a charm to the character.
The work he is able to do on Eastwood is wonderful.
If Eastwood had been remained the one of American cinema
he might never have become Clint.
He took away that divine aspect
that made him utterly improbable.
Greetings, my friend.
He made him a God among men.
He managed to bring and transfer the Roman indolence
inside Clint Eastwood's body, in the attitudes, the mannerisms
that being sly
and at the same time awake, cunning, smart.
- Ciak, first. - Montaldo. - Here I am.
I was in the Papi-Colombo film
because I had to make my first film with them.
My debut was in the room
where the two producers had their studio.
I heard noises.
Noises and voices. At one point, I hear making…
And then, here they come.
It was Sergio Leone
telling the producers about the movie with the shooting.
The beauty and charm with which he told things were impressive.
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
The idea was
Harlequin serves the two masters.
He puts himself in the middle
and sells himself to one and the other
without the two knowing it
and turning them against each other.
In Ford's films, when an actor opens the window
it is always to look at the immense future ahead.
In mine, when they open the window
they only have the terror and the fear
of getting shot between the eyes.
The movie was released in Florence.
On Friday gained 600,000 liras, 800 on Saturday
a million and three on Sunday.
On Monday, it was expected 100,000 liras.
It made a million and a half. The myth had arrived in Rome.
For me, the west is mostly fairy tales and fantasy.
There are historical characters,
but they are also linked to myth, legend, fairy tale.
THE BAD
THE UGLY
My latest film "The Good the Bad, and the Ugly"
is an epic picaresque western
because it's the story
of 3 magnificent and sympathetic rogues
set in the context of the Civil War.
He used to take us with him.
He had a passion for us.
There was a feeling
that family was above everything else.
I have just some childhood memories.
I remember these deserted, dusty lands
where there were no children, only adults.
We had to be quiet because he was shooting.
For a child, it was a very boring thing.
I have beautiful memories.
For a child, being brought on a set is a fantastic game.
The greatest joy was being dressed
to play extras in the film.
He had a strong bond with the family.
Having spent many months at home before shooting "Un sacco bello"
I saw the relationship between him, his wife and his children.
He was in love
with his two daughters, Andrea and his wife Carla.
It was a lovely family.
People in Dad’s crew often came over our house
they were friends.
There wasn't a shocking impact of being in a strange place
it was a familiar place.
For me, it was a great game, a nice journey.
It was a way to get together on vacation.
It was a different vacation from those of my friends
who had a quieter and normal life.
In Libération, about 30 years ago,
there was a questionnaire.
It was asked to 200 directors, or something like that.
The question was: "Why do you shoot?"
One answer that stood out for me was that of David Lynch
who replied, "To create universes and see if it works."
"For me, Sergio Leone creates a universe and it works".
We are here working on the research of two motifs
for my last film called "Duck, You Sucker!"
Dad had landmarks from which he would never deviate.
You could tell him the coolest singer in the world was there
he would say, "He can do a song, but Ennio does the soundtrack".
There was no discussion.
I remember, when I made my first film
"For a Fistful of Dollars"
I didn't want Ennio Morricone, because I didn't know him
I was used to working with another musician.
We met two days later
because the producers wanted us to meet.
And at that moment, we recognized each other.
Now I think we have to work, my dear friend Ennio.
Let's go in.
They were in complete harmony.
Dad and Ennio were working
on the score of ''Duck, You Sucker!".
Ennio plays something and Dad says
"Yes, but make it a bit sweeter here".
Make it a bit sweeter, it's about kids.
There was an all-around collaboration
they were birthing it together.
This is the perfect fusion.
I remember Sergio when we were in third grade.
Then he disappeared
because he changed school the next year
so I never saw him again until many years after that
when he asked me to do the soundtrack
for "A Fistful of Dollars".
I made that film very willingly.
I had an idea in mind and I developed it.
The whistle and the instruments that accompanied the whistle
were fancy and had nothing to do with it
weird percussion.
In all of Sergio's films
I've changed the physiognomy of the music every time.
The music box in the second film
was part of the script, of the story.
However, it was not always in the scene.
When it was filmed without the music box in the scene
it became an abstract thing.
It was important that it took this aspect of sound
in relation to history.
In "Once upon a time in the West"
the harmonica becomes the protagonist.
He found out
that when an instrument makes sounds
in the reality of the image
and we hear it again without it being in the image
this instrument becomes a fundamental evocation
that cooperates with the meanings of the film.
This was an important stunt of his.
That was very kind of him. I didn't do the scripts.
He meant that the meaning of the music
behind the pictures and the realistic sounds of the film
it meant quite as much as the dialogue could mean
something more than the dialogue
the abstract interpretation of words.
Sergio's films were so good
that they held even inferior music
than the ones I wrote.
The music is not part of the film
it interprets the film
it supports concepts
that the composer lends to the film
and of course to the director.
The actor's thoughts, what he does not say
can be represented by music.
The look of a motionless actor
who felt behind him or in front of him
something unbearable.
It was full of suspicions, memories, terrible things
or very simple things.
When faced with playing
emotional, particular, sentimental scene
with music underneath
have sometimes gone off the rails
and said, "Look, we don't give a damn about direct-to-video".
"I keep the music underneath because it helps me".
"We'll dub this piece later".
With music on the set
something special and sacred happens.
It takes greater concentration on everyone's part.
There is a higher harmony
that brings together in the best possible way
the product of everyone's work.
This is a particular scene that I turn all silent
because it is as if seen by a protagonist
who is only discovered
at the end of this tracking shot.
Sends a little less smoke.
- A little less smoke! - Shooting.
Clapperboard. 28-1, first take.
Perhaps, Sergio Leone is also the last great silent filmmaker.
He gave back
an extraordinary strength to images.
Sergio worked a lot on silence.
On the silence of whom?
Of the actors, of the characters.
On the silence of seeing a scene.
That silence is true, represented by music.
The music at that moment represented itself
in a very fundamental way for that scene
for what had happened earlier and for what would happen later.
Music told the past and the future of the film.
My father had a great attention to noise.
He found in Ennio more than fertile ground.
Yes?
Here, even with the tools, good.
We used these for Robert De Niro's steps
in "Once Upon a Time in America".
I used to work with Renato Marinelli
who was Sergio's foley artist.
Everything used to be reproduced in studio.
Today computers help us editing.
In the past, you had to do everything in studio
and you had to be suitable.
Sergio Leone looked grumpy, but he was a chum after all.
He was funny
and he would gratify you for the job you did.
When he enters the field
make me the sound of a horse in the background.
It's the same.
Make it a little less strident, or it will disturb.
I always met the noisemakers.
We used to joke and say
''Keep the noisemakers down"
"because the music has to come out'.'
That was our fun, funny talk.
Morricone was quite a character.
When you entered the environment there was some confidence.
There was joking around.
Once, while he was mixing, in agreement with Sergio Leone
Fausto changed the music.
Sometimes, Ennio would fall asleep in the hall
then slowly change and put on music by another musician.
At that point, he would wake up.
"What happened?"
And he would reply, "Didn't you like it?"
I met Sergio Leone
when I made "The Good the Bad and the Ugly".
From there until "Once Upon a Time in America"
I mixed everything.
Leone creates
his expressive revolution within his field.
The highest example is
the beginning of "Once Upon a Time in the West".
Those long credits that made history.
The squeaking of the mill and everything.
He had made the music, as beautiful as ever.
When we went to mix, Ennio was not there.
So, he says to me
"Fausto, let's get this music off."
"Sergio, are you sure?" "Let's get this music off."
Those realistic sounds are not
the negation of Morricone's music.
They are the fruit of their intense collaboration.
When we mixed, Ennio Morricone came to see.
At the beginning, we didn't say anything to him.
"Sergio, you made the most beautiful music ever".
He didn't take it personally!
For 70 years, cinema has been the art of synthesis.
Leone showed us it was possible
to tell the life of a man in 90 minutes
and Leone told us
how time can be suspended
lengthened, transformed, multiplied
and how cinema can also be the art of telling about waiting
of telling that nothing is happening.
This belonged to literature, but not to cinema.
The one about the fly trapped in the gun was my idea.
That's for sure, I bragged a lot about it to Sergio afterwards.
You never feel the anguish of the editing director
who must necessarily close one situation
to make room for the next one.
The story has to breathe on its own.
You feel this and it's special, new and perfect.
"Once Upon a Time in the West" is an arthouse film.
I set out to tell through a parable
as it could have been a fairy tale, or a western
to tell the story of the birth of the American nation.
I was very young, I was a young boy.
For me, it was a great honor to hang out with Sergio Leone.
Bernardo, Sergio and I wrote this treatment
that was then the basis of the film.
At the beginning, we used to meet at Sergio's place.
Then, we started meeting at Bernardo's or at my place.
This job lasted quite a lot, two or three months.
The main character was a woman.
He had never worked with women in his movies.
I think it was for this reason that he took Bernardo and me
because we were very young.
He thought screenwriters at that time, of a certain age
did not know about femininity.
I did the first part and Bernardo did the second one.
We went to a copy shop with a big pack of papers
and this woman started writing.
While she was writing, we stood there waiting
because we wanted to take it away.
He became passionate about this story.
She loved it so much.
Every now and then she would say, "This scene is beautiful".
We were thrilled by this fact, it was an important moment.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
Sergio took some very famous actors at the time
among whom excelled Henry Fonda.
The nicest actor in Hollywood history.
I can tell this anecdote.
He came to Italy transformed. He was someone else.
He had black hair, Spanish-style sideburns
and even black contact lenses.
I left him like he was.
Slowly and gently, I tried to postpone his entrance.
Day by day, I made him take off something of this masking.
Finally, before going on stage, I said to him
"Shouldn't you also remove these black contact lenses"
"that make your gaze fixed, monotonous?"
"You have wonderfully expressive eyes"
He finally took them out.
I put the car behind him
and almost surprisingly doing a circular cart
I would make discover
that underneath this terrible murderer
there is none other than Henry Fonda.
As a great actor and experienced actor
he said, "Jesus Christ, now I understand".
He loved John Ford, Howard Hawks
the great myths of American Western cinema.
He felt he needed to tell their stories in another way.
I don't fight to impose my ideas on others.
I fight to not let others' ideas impose themselves on me.
Entertainment should be a vehicle
a bicycle to get to make speeches that interest us
but without taking a position.
Taking a position means making an advertisement
and that's a kind of cinema I don't like.
He didn't make easy films.
They were very difficult and political.
There was a lot of thought behind them
and a lot of commitment.
REVOLUTION IS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE
He addresses certain issues with his own way of seeing
that is that of a kid who remembers how to play
but who already knows how the world of adults works.
Late 1967, early 1968, I went to America
in an attempt to make "Once Upon a Time in America".
The idea had been with me for a long time.
I am very stubborn, very tenacious.
In fact, I make the cinema I love to make.
I have to love a film viscerally and from the inside out.
Why haven't you done anything for two years?
I'm stuck.
It's quite a story the whole audience knows it by now.
This is for "Once Upon a Time in America"?
Yes, it's for "Once Upon a Time in America."
I've started the script and I can't buy the copyright.
I hope to break the deadlock, we'll see.
For 10 long years if not longer, this has been the focal point.
I remember him telling us about the film
even before he had written it.
I think Dad read us the script at least 100 times.
In the evening he would come back and say
"I changed this, I did this".
Initially the film was called "Once Upon a Time, America".
Then, he said it was a little too pretentious.
We experienced the joy of seeing his dream finally coming true
when Arnon Milchan appeared in his life and in ours too.
The story is an ideal continuation of a triptych
and the pretext of gangsterism, of American reminiscence
is the pretext for a European like me with my background
to express my love for American cinema.
The subtitle of the film could be
"'Once upon a time, there was a certain kind of film".
Color will be an important feature. Here are the colors.
In my opinion, the right tones are brown and beige.
This is the Lyric Theatre that we do exactly the same.
"Once Upon a Time in America" is my father's way of thinking big.
I want this aerial orchestra.
It seems like something out of a storybook.
For its melancholy for the past.
During the first scene he shot, we were all tense
because it was so many years…
For me it was like watching him shoot for the first time.
Dad was very excited.
He could finally start his big dream.
Cut!
He never sought applause or sympathetic film criticism.
It arrived with "Once upon a time in America".
He was very surprised
by the clamor the film received at Cannes Film Festival.
His surprise
when the 20 minutes of applause in the hall went on forever.
I remember the look in his eyes
which in front of others went unnoticed
but it was incredibly emotional for me.
Then, the next day's criticism made him happy.
As usual, as he would have done in one of his films
it didn't end so well.
This is what worries me the most
to get to cut it to two hours and three quarters
they're forced to do a new edit, so it is no longer my film.
It was a big deal for him.
If I had been him
I would have been curious to see the havoc
that had been wrecked.
He never wanted to see it. That was his creature.
I remember we went to Leningrad
where he narrated the whole film.
There was a page written in Leningrad
he had the whole film in his head.
He thought of De Niro.
Among his collaborators there was Tonino Delli Colli
who stammered back to him
"You know we're going to die in Russia, right?"
"-40 degrees, it's going to be freezing cold"
"you're sick, in the trenches."
"Can't we do a good detective story set in Paris?"
"Can't we do it in the theater? We're old people."
He always told me he wanted to make this film.
I would occasionally ask him
"If you have the script ready, let me read it".
He used to tell me: "I haven't done it'.
He always told me this.
He knew he couldn't do it.
SILENCE
It is like going to an art gallery
to see paintings of a revolutionary artist.
You are enchanted.
It has been 38 years since the first time I came to Italy
as a young actor for an equally young director, Sergio Leone.
That event was a positive turning point
for both our careers.
Thank you very much, Sergio.
A lion for Leone.
The director is missing, but not only me,
the whole world.
I miss a person who was looking for the best in me
knowing that I could give it.
If you had Sergio here, what would you say to him?
Me personally: "How much I missed you."
That's all.
Come back.
I'd like to say thank you to him.
Wait, I'll be fine.
What is it? Thirty-five years?